"Is five years of perseverance really worth it? Continue or fully withdraw?" This question is difficult for every Filecoin miner to answer.

As the lock-up period officially ends, miners are starting to get serious. On-chain data shows clearly—recently, the average daily FIL unlock volume has exceeded one million tokens, and the computing power share of some mining pools is noticeably decreasing. At first glance, it seems like a collective bearish outlook, but in reality, this is more a result of pressure from funding, market competition, and technological upgrades—three major challenges forcing a change. The entire decentralized storage track is undergoing a painful transformation.

Funding is the most painful part. Filecoin’s staking mechanism is quite harsh—mining from day one requires capital to be locked in. Tokens staked early on must be locked for 540 days before they can be fully released, and the rewards mined need another 180 days to be linearly unlocked. Over the past five years, the price of FIL has fallen from $237.24 to $2.3, a 99% decline. What’s the result? Not only have miners not profited, but the staked assets have directly shrunk due to the plummeting token price, trapping them in a vicious cycle of "staked liquidation → forced sale → further price drops." For small and medium miners, long-term funds are frozen, and they still need to cover operational costs monthly. Once the lock-up period ends, it becomes the best point for stop-loss, and exiting the market becomes almost inevitable.

The market hasn’t been kind to miners either. Some traditional centralized storage service providers are fighting back. Certain cloud storage giants have launched hybrid storage solutions compatible with IPFS, using more mature infrastructure and lower costs to compete with Filecoin...